The laws should be as few and as simple as possible.
This tenet works in hand-in-hand with the Morality article, because when you get right down to it, laws are merely written rules to define acceptable societal conduct, codified by government and can be traced back to the 5th through 10th Commandments and the Golden Rule before that.
Our Founding Fathers intended for government to stay out of the way as much as possible. When government "helps," the Citizen does less and less for himself, surrendering more responsibility and control away from himself and to the government. They said that "The laws should be as few as possible and should be able to be understood 'while running'." Try reading something complex while jogging and you'll see what they were getting at.
One law I find to be extremely hurtful to the United States is the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946.
This allows Executive Branch agencies (EPA, BATF, DOE, et.al.) to write and enforce regulations. These regulations have the same force of laws passed by Congress. These regulations are written and enforced by the same agency. Think of your local unelected Chief of Police (appointed by the Mayor/City Council) having the power to write new criminal code and then enforcing it on the citizens. That doesn’t sound right, does it? It seems like that is ripe for abuse of power, doesn’t it?
If you don't like a law that Congress passes, you can write, call or visit your Congressman and/or Senators and urge them to abolish or make the law so it doesn't hurt you. Considering they have to reapply for their job every 2 or 6 years, they listen to you, especially in large groups saying the same thing. A bureaucrat, appointed by the President or just hired into a position in the federal government, what are we going to do about them? Not a damned thing we can do about them. We the People have no leverage when it comes to bureaucrats. They make a rule, enforce it with their inspectors and SWAT teams, and Congress can't/won't do anything about the regulation and can't fire the bureaucrat because they have no power over the Executive Branch of government other than Impeaching the President and setting how much he's paid. And in all reality, are you going to vote against a president that you may like just because of one regulation or one bureaucratic drone? I don't think so.
The Administrative Procedure Act is also unconstitutional. Article I, Section 1 Clause 1 of the Constitution clearly states:
All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States…”
To paraphrase Madison [original quote], “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted Congress a right to delegate its powers and duties to the Executive Branch of the same government.”
Now, you can read all of these various regulations in the Federal Register, a publication put out by the federal government that has every law passed, program proposed and every regulation. Here is an example, this is the first three pages of the Frank-Dodd Act. Did you read it? Mind numbing and confusing, was it not? That’s not the bad news.
That was only 3 pages out of the 79,311 pages of the Federal Register in 2013. From 2003-2016, imagine trying to read and comprehend 1,090,639 pages of this bureaucratic legalese. You can’t. Businesses or organizations who desire to do business with the government have to hire people specifically to read the Federal Register for the entries on proposed contracts or grants that the businesses/organizations can apply for. You and I, as private citizens do not have the time, resources or bandwidth to read and comprehend everything applicable to us.
Yet, we are still responsible for our actions, as judged against the laws and regulations as stipulated in these pages of governmental gobblygook. Every citizen in the course of our daily lives violates at least three felony-level crimes as laid out in these pages. The only reason why you aren’t prosecuted and/or in jail is because it generally isn’t in the best interests of the United States to expend the resources to prosecute you. May God bless you that you never warrant enough attention of the federal government for them to do so. Here is an annual report, Ten Thousand Commandments 2017 that should scare you to your core.
Alexander Hamilton said this in Federalist Paper #61:
It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.
I think we are there already, don’t you?